The present invention relates to printing of electronic documents and more particularly to method and apparatus for augmenting the printing of electronic documents with features to enhance the experience of reading or using the hardcopy of an electronic document.
Increasingly, readers of documents are being called upon to assimilate vast quantities of information in a short period of time. To meet the demands placed upon them, readers find they must read documents xe2x80x9chorizontally,xe2x80x9d rather than xe2x80x9cvertically,xe2x80x9d i.e., they must scan, skim, and browse sections of interest in multiple documents rather than read and analyze a single document from beginning to end.
Documents are becoming more widely available in electronic form. Some documents are available electronically by virtue of their having been created using word processing software. Other electronic documents are accessible via the Internet. Yet others may become available in electronic form by virtue of being scanned in, copied, or faxed. Commonly assigned U.S. application Ser. No. 08/754,721, entitled AUTOMATIC AND TRANSPARENT DOCUMENT ARCHIVING, the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference for all purposes, details a system for generating electronic as well as hardcopy format of documents.
However, the mere availability of documents in electronic form does not assist the reader in confronting the challenges of assimilating information quickly. Indeed, many time-challenged readers still prefer paper documents because of their portability and the ease of flipping through pages.
Certain tools take advantage of the electronic form documents to assist harried readers. Tools exist to search for documents both on the Internet and locally. Once a document is identified and retrieved, automatic summarization techniques, such as the Reader""s Helper(trademark), described in a commonly owned copending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/995,616, entitled AUTOMATIC ADAPTIVE DOCUMENT HELP SYSTEM, the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference for all purposes, helps the reader to find as well as assimilate the information he or she wants more quickly. However, there is heretofore no automatic assistance available to the reader who desires to work with printed hardcopy of electronic documents.
What is needed is a document printing system that helps the reader print the information he or she wants more quickly. The document printing system should be easily personalizable, flexible and adaptive as well.
An automatic printing assistant application for documents in electronic form is provided by virtue of the present invention. In certain embodiments, an elongated thumbnail image of all or part of an electronically stored document is displayed. A section of the document of interest to the reader is emphasized. Movement of the emphasized area in the elongated thumbnail image assists the user with the selection of sections or pages of the document for printing. The operation of the assistant is personalizable for a particular user by setting of a sensitivity level and selection of relevant topics of interest. Some embodiments of the assistant are also capable of improved performance over time by both automatic and manual feedback. The assistant is usable with many popular electronic document formats.
In accordance with a first aspect of the present invention, a method for adaptively controlling printing of an electronically stored document includes a step of accepting user input indicating a user-specified concept of interest. A step of analyzing the electronically stored document to identify locations of discussion of the user-specified concept of interest may also be included. Embodiments can also include a step of displaying visual indications of the identified locations. In another step, user input indicating a print preference for certain locations is accepted. Finally, portions of the electronic document corresponding to the user""s print preferences are printed.
In accordance with a second aspect of the present invention, the method for assisting a reader in printing an electronically stored document also includes a step of accepting user input indicating a print preference by emphasizing an area of interest to the user in a thumbnail image corresponding to a section of interest to the user in the document. The user can control printing by sliding the emphasized area through thumbnail image for the purposes of indicating sections of the electronically stored document to print.
In select embodiments in accordance with the present invention, the method includes a step of displaying an elongated thumbnail image of a portion of the electronically stored document in a viewing area of a display.
In certain embodiments in accordance with the present invention, the step of analyzing the electronically stored document to identify locations of discussion of the user-specified concept of interest may be realized by exploiting a probabilistic inference method, such as a Bayesian belief network or its equivalent to identify such locations.
Numerous benefits are achieved by way of the present invention over conventional techniques. In some embodiments, the present invention is more user friendly than conventional techniques. The present invention can provide a way for the user to obtain hardcopy of only those sections of a large document which contain concepts of interest. Some embodiments according to the invention are more robust than known techniques. These and other benefits are described throughout the present specification and more particularly below.